How to Effectively use Traffic Exchanges to Improve your SE Rank

The thing about search engine ranking is that it is based partially on the amount of traffic your website receives. However the catch 22 is that it seems nearly impossible to get a lot of traffic to your site without a high search engine ranking. You can create backlinks in directories for days that might generate a few targeted hits to your site without a high Google rating, but nothing that impresses a search engine with dynamic traffic, just backlinks that few people see and their only motivation to click through IF they find you is your two-line website description. If you're just getting a website started, posting blogs and articles produces some traffic but not a lot. Your submissions on large blog sites get buried quickly, and smaller sites just don't refer much traffic. I'm by no means saying DON'T do these things, absolutely, keep it up, eventually your popularity will grow...I'm just saying you probably feel, if you're just getting started, that you need a boost.

There's a partial solution to speed up the process. One way to increase visits to your website while waiting for a high search engine rank is through traffic exchange sites. These websites promise free unique targeted traffic to your website by viewing other members' websites who will in return be shown yours. The number of times your website is shown depends on the amount of activity you perform on the website. On most of these sites, though, the ones that are "rotators", you shouldn't expect "targeted" traffic, that is the people who view your site most likely won't look at your content or click through your pages unless the site is set up to motivate the users to do so. They're waiting for the timer to run out, to receive credit for the visit, before they click to the next site. However, these visits still count as a hit to your URL and are a little bit useful.

In order to make the traffic from "rotator" traffic exchanges a little more valuable in the eyes of a search engine, you should keep it varied and limited. Participate on several different traffic exchanges, receiving 100 or fewer hits a day from various referring URLs, instead of 1000 hits a day from one website. Add as many websites as you promote to each traffic exchange, as many as each site will allow, to spread the hits around. If the traffic exchange offers you the option, limit your hits per day (I usually limit my hits from each traffic exchange site to 20 per day per webpage where I can). This way if you receive a lot of credits in one day from one traffic exchange site, you can benefit from them for a while and your traffic numbers look more natural without spikes.

Unlike directories, you can usually submit multiple pages from the same URL to rotator traffic exchanges. Add as many internal pages as you are allowed URLs, spreading your website views around to different pages of your website. Search engines like to see traffic on your internal pages as well as your top level home page. And you never know, the more content you show on the rotator, the more likely someone is to get a glimpse of something that compels them to click away from their busy surfing schedule.

Here are important things to look for when choosing traffic exchange websites to participate in:

1. Directory Listing Organization

Rather than using an automatic rotator, some traffic exchange sites add your URL to a directory listing for members to browse. Your listing would include a SE optimized ad within your directory topic which also serves as a backlink for search engines to track. So you have motivated viewers AND a new relevant backlink to show for it. These traffic exchange websites are better than exchange "rotators" in that regard and that they provide real viewers who chose your website among others within a selected topic and are more likely to look through your pages.

2. High Membership

A few traffic exchanges that have been around a long time have 10s and 100s of thousands of members. This provides more unique visits to your website, rather than the same 20 members viewing your page over and over again.

3. Member Website Reviews

Some traffic exchange sites motivate members to post reviews of websites for points or traffic. This is a guarantee that if you participate, your site will be looked at by humans who will not only open your page, but browse it and provide you feedback. If these members like what they see they will most likely sign up or bookmark your site and come back later. Either way this is activity on your website that looks good to search engines AND can convert visitors to customers.

4. Forum and Blog Posts

A lot of traffic exchanges (directories and rotators alike) have forum and blog pages where you can post stories and comments for additional visibility. They might also provide points or credits for additional site traffic for posting often.

5. High Surf Ratio

Of course it's important that you get the most traffic to your site for your effort. Most rotator traffic exchanges offer a lower surf ratio to free members than paid members, but don't waste your time surfing on a site that offers less than a 2:1 ratio (meaning for every 2 sites you visit you receive 1 visitor to your site) unless the site offers enough surf bonuses and other methods of redeeming their value for surfing.

6. Direct Marketing Opportunities

Many traffic exchanges will send your email advertisements to other members for a fee or for traffic exchange credits. They control the permission-based email list and all you have to do is submit your copy. Many of these also compensate the recipient with surf credits for viewing the advertisement.